Part 2
The next morning, Diego didn’t appear for breakfast. I found his bed empty and a note in shaky handwriting: “I left so you wouldn’t fight anymore because of me.”
Alejandro mobilized drivers and guards, but it was I who understood where he had gone. Diego had told me that his mother used to take him to a small park beside the parish church in the old neighborhood. We found him sitting beneath a jacaranda tree, clutching the T-shirt that had caused the punishment.
When Alejandro tried to approach, the boy stepped behind me.
That gesture broke something in Alejandro.
We returned home and I called the family doctor — the one who had treated the Salgados for years. When he examined Diego, he tried to minimize the injuries, but I insisted he prepare a full report. After several hours, he admitted that the boy had previously suffered two broken fingers and a cracked rib. He had never been taken to a hospital. Doña Teresa had ordered him to treat everything in secret.
Alejandro listened to the report from the hallway.
For the first time, he didn’t defend his mother.
I also went to Diego’s school. His teacher admitted she had noticed bruises, changes in behavior, and fear of going home — but the administration had asked her to stay silent because the Salgado family funded part of its scholarships. I made clear that from that moment on, any sign of trouble should be reported directly to me and to the appropriate authorities.
That afternoon I took Diego to a bookstore, then to a hamburger restaurant. When I dropped a potato chip on the table, he flinched, raised his arms to protect himself, and began apologizing.
“Nobody here is going to hit you for making a mistake,” I told him.
He looked at me, eyes full of tears.
“Did my mother die because I was bad?”
I held him while he cried for the first time without hiding.
When we returned to the residence, Alejandro was waiting with a document. He was prepared to grant me authority over Diego’s care — authorizing treatments and educational decisions — but in exchange, I had to surrender any financial rights derived from the marriage.
I signed without hesitation.
“Your son isn’t a property you can trade for stock,” I told him. “I don’t need your fortune to protect him.”
Then I demanded to move with Diego to the guesthouse on the far side of the garden. Alejandro agreed, though he warned that his mother would not accept it quietly.
He was right.
Doña Teresa cut off the internet, halted the food service, dismissed the staff, and had the refrigerator disabled. Yet in that small space, Diego began to smile. We cooked together, watered the plants, and ate dinner without fear.
One night, Alejandro arrived carrying appliances and groceries. He admitted that he had been watching his son’s happiness from a distance and felt ashamed.
Diego came downstairs, hesitated, and offered him a cookie. Alejandro took it with trembling hands.
It seemed like the beginning of something.
But two days later, Doña Teresa arrived with a lawyer. She placed bank statements on the table and accused me of coming from a family of swindlers. She claimed my mother had received three million pesos from a company linked to the Salgados, and that if I didn’t hand Diego over, she would file criminal charges against her.
I knew that story: it hadn’t been theft, but a loan repaid years earlier.
I took out the medical file, the photographs, the doctor’s messages, and a recording from the wedding night.
“File your complaint,” I told her. “I’ll file mine.”
Doña Teresa lost her smile. But before leaving, she leaned toward me.
“You still don’t know who killed Diego’s mother.”
Alejandro, who had just walked in, dropped his keys on the floor.
And in the silence of that room, I understood that the worst secret of the Salgado family was about to surface.
